Thank goodness red was my favorite color.
I was excited to tell Mom about the job news and the lawyer news, but she was nowhere to be found. Truth be told, I missed her.
For a good five minutes I considered cooking. In the end I made a sandwich of peanut butter, jelly, and resignation. I’d consider the urge to cook a small victory. Could I be blamed for not wanting to act on that urge after everything that had happened the past few days?
As I was putting my plate in the sink, I heard the door open. I froze. Was it Mitch or Mom? Shouldn’t be Dylan since he was supposed to be at school.
“Well, Connie, I’m here. I’ll have to call you later.”
That voice belonged to my mom. As I walked to the front door to greet her, she paused halfway in the entrance trying to end the call on her phone. Lucky ran between her legs and out into the night.
“Mom!” I shouted. My tone came out angrier than I’d intended because I didn’t want to have to fetch the cat out of the shrubs after dark, and she knew Lucky was a darter.
“What?”
“Could you move, please?” Irritation and accusation bled into my tone.
Unfazed, she shuffled into the foyer, still trying to end the call. I finally brushed past her just in time to see Lucky disappearing around the corner of the house. “Lucky! You get back here!”
I fumbled with my phone’s flashlight and picked my way around the front landscaping to get to the side of the house.
No cat.
I shivered in the night air, my flip-flopped feet less than enthused about the chilly, damp weather. “Seriously, cat.”
Something rustled in the brush behind the house, and I headed that way. The phone’s flashlight did little to illuminate the backyard. I couldn’t even seem to catch Lucky’s one green eye.
“Lucky?”
Panic caught in my chest. Here I was looking for a black cat on a black night in the middle of a bunch of blackberry bushes that I should’ve cleared out a long time ago. I’d figured that lawn work was the least Mitch could do since I handled all the household tasks. Little did I know that he could, in fact, do even less.
Wait. Halloween was in just two days. Awful things sometimes happened to black cats on Halloween.
This time the chill that ran through me had nothing to do with the October weather and everything to do with the seriousness of the situation.
“Kitty kitty?” The second word came out on a sob. Why was I bothering? Lucky had never once considered herself a kitty, nor did she come when called.
“This isn’t funny,” I said as I tried to push my way into the brambles to get a better look. “Come on back to the house now, Lucky. I’ll give you all the treats.”
Treats!
I ran back into the house for both a bag of treats and an actual flashlight. Back in the yard, I shook the bag and called for Lucky until my voice started to crack. Even with a wider range, the flashlight still didn’t reveal my cat.
I tamped down my feelings, trying to shove them into my mental chest of drawers. That bad boy was getting awfully full. After what felt like an hour of walking around the house and searching through the brambles as though my life depended on it, I finally gave up. I sank down on my back patio, concentrating on keeping my tears at bay.
Not my Lucky. Losing her would be a bridge too far.
A few hot tears escaped.
“Lucky!” I called out one more time.
Nothing.
Just the sound of cars on the highway across the backyard and the rustle of a breeze in the trees and bushes. I closed my eyes against the idea of Lucky wandering out onto the highway. They wouldn’t be able to see her and—
Don’t think about it.
And where was my mother during all this? Why hadn’t she come to help?
